


Home Improvement After Midnight

by shortitude



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy Johnson Feels Brigade, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Oral Sex, Phil is the president and founder of the Daisy Johnson fanclub, Vaginal Sex, mentions of past Lincoln/Daisy, not Lincoln-friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:43:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Lincoln leaves the Playgound for good, trades it with a spot at the Cocoon that will last god knows how long – or how little – Daisy doesn’t even have the time to feel sorry for herself. It all happens with a jarring sort of speed. </p><p>(She feels – well, it’s unfair to say it, but she feels free. Like someone went and took a weight off her ankles and she can finally sprint without restraints. </p><p>So obviously, she decides to put that energy to good use.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Improvement After Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts).



> For **zauberer_sirin** , who requested fluff & "redecorating the room at three am because they can't sleep". 
> 
> This fic contains a healthy amount of Lincoln/Daisy bashing, as you do. It also has brief hints of homophobia, blink and you'll miss it; tries to make up for the initial necessary angst with messy sex. (Succeeds? I don't know, you tell me.) Other tags would've been: "daisy is a leia-stan", "platonic handholding: you're doing it wrong", "un-melodramatic love confessions", "secretly pining for one other the whole time", "daisy really needs to stop punishing herself", "there's a thing about hair-pulling in here too", "you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette", "warning: phil owns a pair of joveralls and you can't convince me otherwise" - but then the tags would've been infinite, so I didn't put them up there. I can't believe this is what came out of a home improvement prompt.

The day Lincoln leaves the Playgound for good, trades it with a spot at the Cocoon that will last god knows how long – or how little – Daisy doesn’t even have the time to feel sorry for herself. It all happens with a jarring sort of speed.

She leads her team on a mission to contact a new Inhuman in the south of Spain. It’s summer, the heat is sweltering and the city is full of tourists, and maybe for that reason she should have been more tolerant about what happened. Except, not really; because Joey and Yo-Yo, both of whom have never been across the Atlantic before, have been perfectly capable of behaving like normal, mature adults. They make a great team – hell, the four of them, if you add Mack (which Daisy always, always does) make a great team, and she could get by on saving the world with just them – except they bring Lincoln along as well.

For all those weeks she convinced herself that what she was building with Lincoln was good, was safe and nice, it takes the proverbial weekend away to realize how wrong she’d been. He still undermines her, and it’s starting to grate on her nerves, especially given that he’s even gotten _Yo-Yo_ to give him the stink eye (Joey’s been a definite not-fan since day one; something about someone calling what he was a disease brought up familiar ugly memories, and she should’ve taken that as a sign too).

It all blows up when they lose track of the Inhuman, and have to get back to HQ with their tails between their legs. They have a big fight of it on the plane, and there are three things Daisy comes to terms with: 1. It’s over between them for reasons that go beyond him enjoying acting like a misunderstood Byronic anti-hero. 2. He never respected her; he grew up in a safe environment, studied his gifts and explored them to the point of obtaining control without HYDRA being on his tail, and when _she_ turns out to have more chill, he gets petulantly mad? 3. Every little thing he knows about her past, he uses against her when it pleases him.

So by the time the plane lands, thankfully without Lincoln’s control snapping in mid-air, she terminates his stay on the team and advises him to find somewhere else to contribute to the cause, if he even wants to. He decides to leave; doesn’t tell her, she finds out through Simmons, which is part of the reason she refuses to feel sorry for herself.

There are reports to write, there’s a tense meeting with Mack and Coulson to have, and by the time she has a moment to herself, the Playground is one doctor short.

 _And how do I feel about that?_ she questions herself late that night, trying to evoke Andrew’s calm methods.

She feels – well, it’s unfair to say it, but she feels free. Like someone went and took a weight off her ankles and she can finally sprint without restraints.

So obviously, she decides to put that energy to good use.

 

*

 

“Hey, do you know if we’ve got any paint around?”

Coulson looks up from his paperwork with an understandable bemused expression. “Paint for…?”

“Painting,” she supplies, aware that it sounds dry. ( _Unlike paint, ha!_ her inexplicably giddy brain supplies.) “For walls,” she adds, to be specific. Coulson gives her a look like he doesn’t understand why she’s asking for paint, or why she’s asking him for paint, so she talks before he can: “One of the rooms cleared out today and I thought I’d redecorate it. For Yo-Yo. I know she’s chosen to stay in Colombia and that’s great, but if she keeps joining us on missions now that she knows what we stand for, and fight for, then she’ll need a nice room to sleep in when she has to sleep over at the Playground. Besides, I know both Joey and Mack would love to have her around,” she rushes on to say, “And anyway, nobody’s going to be using that room from now on.” A bit petty, she adds: “Nobody who deserves to, at least.”

Coulson just stares at her. That’s understandable too, she just went on a rant for two minutes without pausing to breathe, and most of what she said is based on a solid foundation of bullshit. A room for Yo-Yo? Yes, that’s a great idea now that she’s said it out loud, but to be honest she just wants all traces of Lincoln gone, so she can stop feeling sorry for not managing to make a relationship work. Especially one that only she’d been fighting for, apparently.

She waits.

“We can check,” Coulson answers, and for some reason gets up from his desk, grabs the bottle of whisky from the table (great, she interrupted his well-earned nightcap, good job, Daisy) and joins her.

 

*

 

They end up in Lincoln’s former room at three in the morning, pushing the furniture to the middle of the room and covering it in plastic.

“You’re sure we won’t wake anyone?” she whispers, as they push the closet up against the bed. Its legs scrape across the concrete floor, which is probably enough to make whoever’s sleeping in the room below to scream bloody murder.

“The rooms are really well insulated,” Coulson reassures her, with a grim little smile, and moves to unroll one large plastic cover. To give him credit, he waits until the furniture is covered and protected to ask. “So why are we currently one vacated room more?”

Daisy pulls a face. It’s never been a secret that Coulson hadn’t liked Lincoln, having rarely even referred to him by his name, but she’d always thought that was like part of a ritual. She should’ve known better, given that he had no issue calling Joey by his name. What _has_ been a secret, or at least unclear to Daisy, is the reason why Coulson didn’t like him. Now, she could come up with a dozen reasons, but two weeks ago she would’ve gotten defensive about it first.

“It wasn’t a good match.” She adds, dry: “Clearly.” She doesn’t say that she thinks it was a mistake to ever think that it could be, because a part of her had been just so desperate to have someone, anyone, to cling onto and to love, _like that_ , and to be loved by right back. She doesn’t need to, because Coulson had Rosalind Price, and so he knows.

“Let’s get changed before we start,” he says, in way of silent agreement to let Daisy handle the messy part of a messy breakup on her own terms.

 

*

 

“Wow, really? Joveralls?”

Coulson gives her a half-tired grin, shrugging unapologetically at being seen sporting a pair of overalls; _jeans_ look good on him, always have, but these ones are just a tad ridiculous.

“I don’t judge your choices,” he says, pointing at the old, raggedy _Star Wars_ t-shirt she came back wearing. “Pretty sure I saw Bobbi wearing that shirt once."

“You did,” Daisy says, and puffs out her chest a little bit with pride, “I won it in a Star Trek versus Star Wars game. Me and Bobbi teamed up against Mack and Hunter and won, so she gave me this.”

“Not that your victory shocks me,” Coulson starts, “But how do you win that sort of game?”

“By having the best counterattack to _literally any_ pro- Star Trek argument ever.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Yes, but did Star Trek have Leia Organa?”

Coulson bursts out laughing, and that too is distractingly sweet to watch, for many reasons. Because they haven’t had fun together in a while, they haven’t been this easy and loose around each other in what feels like ages now, and he just looks so handsome when he laughs. Handsome, and devastatingly unattainable, all over again; except this time, there’s no Lincoln Campbell to settle for.

She goes to grab the paint roller and the extension, while Coulson gets the paint ready.

Beggars can’t be choosers, so the room gets painted a warm earth tone because that’s the only paint color they could find in the deposit. But two swipes of the roller in, Daisy can already tell the room will look different by the time they’re done, and it’ll be better.

A fresh new start will do it good.

 

*

 

And then they remember the whiskey. It’s around four in the morning, and Daisy would speed up knowing that at some point May will come fetch her for training, but she doesn’t want to break this easy-going pace they’ve got happening.

Coulson looks less stressed than he usually is, and she feels less pressured to be perfect, because she never felt that need around Coulson. He’d been pretty much impressed by her since day one, although sadly unattainable.

Her mistake is telling him, one glass of whiskey and two painted walls in, exactly that.

“Attainable?” he parrots back, his tone soft and a little confused. Like he can’t believe his ears.

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “On account of being so cool, and stuff.”

She remembers feeling vaguely impressed by the guy in the suit with a heart of gold and a willingness to listen to her and act on her plans to save Mike Peterson, busting out in fluent Spanish and smirking over _that’s classified_. She remembers picturing how great he must’ve been at sex, given the looks Commander Reyes had given him back then, and how she’d forced herself to never think about it again, because she was lying to him. She’d been lying to everyone, but the truth is that – once he’d shown her what feeling valued was like – lying to Coulson had always been the hardest.

And anyway, it’s far too late to do anything about her secret crush on Phil Coulson. The two of them have been in the dark together, through hell together, down in the belly of the beast together, and come back mostly unscathed because they worked well. They clicked. She’s never clicked with anyone the way she has with him, so who could blame her for letting him make himself a hole in her heart? A home in there?

But since then, there have been evil almost-exes, almost-evil exes, and good-person-turns-out-to-be-an-asshole exes, and she’d never –

She is not the sort of girl who gets over one relationship by getting under another. She only does that when she’s sure the person she loves doesn’t feel the same way again, and it’s not the right timing, and it’ll never be, and she just wants to feel warm and alive and _wanted_.

“Daisy,” he murmurs, close to her, and snaps her out of it.

She lets the roller rest on top of the bucket of paint, and rubs her hands against the back of her jeans before going over to pick up her glass and take a sip.

“I know, I know,” she murmurs back, after a sigh, “The worst possible moment to bring that up.”

He doesn’t agree with her, not vocally at least, but he does press his lips together in a firm line that tells her everything. And then, cherry on top: “You’re tired, and a little drunk –“

“Don’t,” she cuts him off. “Nope, not listening to that line. I’m _never_ not tired, and ever since terigenesis, I can’t even get properly drunk anymore, so don’t sweep me under the rug right now. The last thing I need is another guy telling me what I’m supposed to be feeling.” She sounds bitter, she thinks; does she sound bitter because she _is_? (She wishes for Andrew again, wishes desperately for him to tell her someone did a number on her, for him to confirm. She keeps thinking that maybe, maybe if he’d been here, she would’ve loved herself more and Lincoln less.)

Coulson seems to sober up at that, and grows quiet. She thinks she’s ruined everything, has the _sorry_ on the tip of her tongue, before he quietly asks: “What do you need, then?”

“I need a friend,” she’s quick to answer, because the answer is simple. “I need the best friend I’ve ever had,” she corrects herself, and gives him a look that she hopes spells out _I mean you_ , instead of betraying how pathetic she is.

Coulson takes a few steps, and places his hand on her shoulder, his thumb sweeping carefully over the skin just above the collar of his shirt. “He’s here.” He does the thing with his thumb again, only in a circle now, and she swears she feels a knot inside her disappear. Maybe he’s got gifts, too, because it makes her want to cry. “He’s sorry he’s been gone, Daisy,” he murmurs, and finally, finally, pulls her in for a hug that she just _crashes_ into. “He’s really sorry.”

She’s definitely crying now; crying and clinging to his back with her free hand, just as he wraps his flesh arm around her shoulders and cups the back of her head so gently. “It’s okay,” she mumbles, because of course it’s okay. He hasn’t really been gone, she’s felt him even in the smallest details (his contribution to the alien symposium, his midnight quest to the common room just to ask if she was okay, ask why she wasn’t asleep instead of playing Mario Kart), but she feels it all return now.

It turns out, she’d been wrong; you don’t stop loving someone just because you see less of them. When they’re still the person you fell for at their core, in their actions, even distance and separation wouldn’t stop you. She hasn’t stopped herself from feeling, not with a surrogate, not with distance, not with denial.

She wants to tell him that, except when she opens her eyes she notices two things. “I got tears and paint all over your joveralls.” And then bursts out laughing, because that word in connection to Coulson, still – honestly.

 

*

 

They finish painting the room, and Coulson gets them beers. It’s a hungover cure, he says, although they haven’t really slept a buzz off. It just feels right, to sit on the plastic-covered bed and share a beer in quiet company, while watching paint dry. _Literally_.

She thought that telling him, even in unspecific terms, about her feelings for him and how far back they went would be weird, but it hasn’t turned weird. There’s a pleasant buzz coming from Coulson, a hum that sinks under her skin and calms her down like white noise, and she feels like she’s come out of this tunnel a new person.

Clean, and free.

Well, mostly just free; the t-shirt’s got a lot of paint specs on it now, and Coulson’s overalls will be thankfully retired after tonight. Or this morning; it’s almost six now. The fact that May hasn’t come to find her means even May has her days when she needs Tai Chi to happen alone. And Daisy gets that, she does; she will be a reminder of something May can’t keep bottling up for long, a reminder that might finally find release when they find Andrew and get him better.

She takes another sip of beer, and lets herself lean against Coulson, their shoulders touching. He reaches out and takes her free hand with his prosthetic; she knows because it feels different than the rest of him, because it doesn’t hum at all. Still makes her shiver when he runs his thumb over her pulse point, though.

She turns her head slowly to look at him, only to find him looking at her with an expression that’s so unguarded it barrels into her for a moment.

“Thanks for being here tonight,” she whispers, and focuses entirely on his blue eyes, nowhere else. Not until his thumb presses against the inside of her wrist and makes her pulse race.

“Anytime,” he says, squeezing her hand gently, carefully. Her best fucking friend, with that self-deprecating smile and that big heart of his.

“I love you,” she tells him, out of the blue maybe, but completely and utterly true. He deserves to hear that, and she deserves to tell someone, at least someone, in her life that won’t ultimately let her down.

“I love you too,” he says, like it’s that simple. Like it doesn’t matter that she can tear continents apart, that she leads her own team, that she spends more time at work than working on her personal relationships. Like loving Daisy Johnson is an easy thing to do.

So of course it breaks her heart.

 

*

 

Her life may be the most melodramatic thing of all, but there is one thing they decide not to be melodramatic about. He doesn’t kiss her, then, and she doesn’t kiss him either.

They wait for the paint to dry, and push the furniture back in place after clearing the room of plastic bags and covers. At this point, it’s already eight in the morning, and Joey comes looking for her, concerned because he was the last to have seen her after the whole Lincoln catastrophe. (That feels like a lifetime ago.)

He takes one look at the room, and at her and Coulson on the bed, holding hands and just looking at each other, smiling, and he smiles like he’s just seen something good happen. Joey ends up helping Daisy out to clean the room up and get the furniture back in place and get it ready for presenting it to Yo-Yo. Coulson, they both tell him to go and get changed out of those overalls before the whole base loses respect for him.

 

*

 

Yo-Yo moves in at ten in the morning, after breakfast. She just walks into the room with her overnight bag, tests the bed out for comfort, and thanks Daisy with a _gracias, jefa_ and a hug that lingers.

The rest of the day, Daisy spends in a haze. There’s training with May, belatedly, though it gets cut off by the older woman ordering Daisy to go take a nap and follow it with coffee. And then there’s that nap, curled up in her own bed. When she wakes up, she’s alone in the room, but she doesn’t _feel_ alone. If she focuses very carefully, she’ll feel Yo-Yo and Mack playing video games somewhere on the base, she’ll feel May and Joey training together, she’ll feel Coulson outside her door.

 _Shit_. She scrambles out of bed and yanks the door open to catch him, hand raised, eyebrow raised.

“Hi,” she manages to get out, surprised and a little nervous.

“Hi,” he says, and looks down at her, and looking up with a smirk. “Bugs Bunny?”

She looks down at herself, with her t-shirt barely reaching her thighs, and her underwear showing, and finds herself blushing. Like a nervous teenager, like she never felt _when_ she was a teenager. “Whatever, it’s laundry day,” she defends herself, and crosses her arms. Coulson glances down at her legs again, a pained little expression crossing his face, and she thinks she knows what he’s here for. “You needed something, Director?” she asks, barriers going up, up, _up_.

He looks up at her again, solemn. Then, his expression softens, and she thinks _oh_ , and he says, “Yes,” and kisses her.

“Oh my god,” she rambles against his mouth, running on fumes and sheer force of will by now, so tired she can’t even keep her mouth in check. “Oh my god, you’re kissing me,” she explains, as if he doesn’t know. As if he’s not the one with his fingers in her hair and his mouth hard and lovely against hers. She feels the vibrations from his low chuckle all the way down between her legs, and it makes her toes curl.

Coulson steps into her room, closes the door behind him, and runs his fingertips over her hips before settling his hands there beneath her shirt. He kisses her mouth again, the corner of her lips, her cheek and nose, all the while she laughs, like she can’t believe it. Then he joins her, like he can’t believe it, “I am. I’m kissing you.”

Daisy lets out the breath she’s been holding, and pushes him against her door, presses the front of her body against his and nips at his lower lip with a slow, slow tease. Relieved, she whispers, “I thought you were here to say we should not talk about –“

“No,” he cuts her off, and puts his mouth to her neck, his grip on her hair a little tight – tight enough to pull a moan out of her – and pulling her head back for a better angle. Either the whole world is shaking, or just she is. “No, I think we’ve done enough of that. Let’s try it your way.”

“What’s my way?”

“The good way.”

She lets out a laugh. “Good answer.”

He turns them around and presses her up against her door, contrasting that shove with his hands ever so gently cupping her face, tilting her head back so he can kiss her again. She smiles through all of it, laughs towards the end, because she is just so happy, she is so happy, and alive, and wanted. And loved, she feels infinitely, impossibly, completely loved.

“Bed?” she suggests, breathless, when he drags his hand up to cup her breast; his thumb finds her nipple already pebbled hard and circles it, and she debates if moving should be a thing at all. Because she could grow old doing just this, forever.

“Bed,” he says, and pulls her away from the door.

She falls on the bed first, because he throws her on it, playful and charming, _of course_ , and she lets out a laugh. The laughter dies off quickly, when he yanks her to the edge of the bed with a grip on the back of her calves. Her ass ends up precariously close to the edge, and she doesn’t need a college degree to know where this is going. But Phil Coulson, kneeling between her spread legs, that’s not something she ever thought she’d see, and never fantasized about simply out of fear of such an unobtainable thing hurting too much.

He kisses the inside of her left thigh, waits for her muscles to stop clenching, and looks up at her, blue eyes standing out and pulling her in. “Daisy, can I?”

“ _Hell yes_ ,” she groans out, and shivers just from picturing it. Impatient, she adds, “Please,” and bites her lips when he finds that an acceptable sign to press his mouth to her sex through the cotton of her underwear.

She gets quiet after that, no words, just sings for him in hums and breathy gasps. He kisses her through the thin layer of clothing and sets his mouth just above her clit and licks, and licks, and licks, until the cotton is wet and she’s wetter. Then he sucks, and magically manages to catch only the fabric of her underwear between his teeth, and tugs them down. She lifts her hips to help him, stunned into silence and holding her breath the entire time it takes him to kiss his way up the inside of her left leg. She is shaking when he finally reaches the crease of her thigh, and lets out a disappointed, frustrated groan when he only switches over to her right thigh and presses a few kisses downwards.

 _I’ll beg_ , she thinks, _I’m not above that right now_. And says “Ple-- _ohgod._ ” He reads her like a book, his mouth on her slick folds before she even gets the chance to beg, his tongue spreading them open before his fingers do. He licks into her; she shakes, and somewhere to her left an empty can of soda shakes off the nightstand onto the floor. Instead of a reprimand, she feels Coulson smile against her, and hum triumphantly.

The next kiss to her clit has her coming, short and intense. He kisses a line up over her mound, to her belly button, pushing her shirt up with his nose. She wonders, half out of it, why he isn’t touching her with his hands; belatedly, she realizes it’s because she hasn’t let go of his hands, their fingers thread together on top of her thighs, ever since he kneeled down.

“Hey, come up here,” she whisper-begs, and pulls him up. He presses his hands on the bed at her sides, and climbs up, hovering above her. Looking down at her like he can’t believe she’s real. _Get in line, buddy, I can’t believe you’re real either._

“Was that okay?” he asks, probably to be sure she’s still on board more than out of a need to stroke his ego. It warms her up inside all over again. She gives him a goofy smile and nods, and pulls him down on top of her, with her hands on his ass.

“Just for the record,” she says, “I really wanted this to happen.”

“Me to go down on you?”

She wipes her thumb across his smirk, and rolls her eyes. “Yes. That too. But _this_. Us. I’ve been pining for you for a long time now, I’m not just rushing in –“

“Daisy.” He runs his fingertips along her cheek and jawline, no vibrations. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I know – I could tell you how long I’ve pined over you, if you wanted –“

“Later,” she cuts him off, still riding on that high of _you don’t have to explain yourself to me_ , and lifts her head to kiss him soundly on his lips, tasting herself as much as she tastes him. “Later, we can have the sappy talk. Right now –“

“I agree,” he groans, and rolls his hips against hers. He’s hard, fuck he’s hard and he wants her, and she should eventually stop being so fascinated by that one thing, but it won’t be this evening.

She brings her hands between them and gets his pants open, letting out a soft groan of her own. “Why’d you have to wear a _suit_ , Phil?”

He grins against the corner of her mouth, and kisses his way down her throat while she struggles with the buttons and zipper and belt. “I was trying to be poetic.”

She pulls him up for another kiss, her hand in his hair, and gets his shirt unbuttoned half-way up before deciding that screw it. She gets the three top buttons undone, then pulls it off him like it’s a t-shirt, throwing it over the side of the bed.

“That fabric’s hard to iron,” he jokes, and takes her sleeping shirt off too.

“ _That_ fabric’s hard to iron, too,” she jokes right back at him, and feels him laugh against the top of her breasts. He still throws her shirt over his shoulder like he doesn’t care, and she really, really doesn’t care either. So there’s that. “Pants,” she says, when he moves his body down again to pay attention to her breasts, all loving and distracting and too far from her again. “Pants, Phil, pants.”

He takes his pants and underwear off with a laugh, but not too quick enough.

“Was that Captain America’s shield?”

“Shut up, it’s laundry day,” he jokes, and cuts her laughter off with another deep kiss.

She’s still laughing when he sinks inside her, his own expression changing from so happy to so entranced; he goes slow, slow, one inch in then half an inch out. Gets her used to it, or teases her with it, or both. When he sinks inside her all the way, she stops laughing, and lets out a deep, mostly quiet moan. He murmurs her name against the corner of her lips like it’s a prayer. She whispers his back like it’s a reverence.

Her and Phil, they make a good team. They make a great team here, too. He fits his hands under her ass to raise her hips, she locks her legs around his waist for leverage, and they move together like this is a dance they’ve been meant to dance all this time.

It’s not perfect, nothing good ever is, but it’s close to being the best she’s had, even though they’re tired and buzzing with a giddiness that has them too out of focus to really come. It still makes for some intense, wonderful few minutes, of him fucking her and her giving back as much as she gets. It makes up for a hickey on the top of her left breast, like he was there looking for her heartbeat, and lines the size of Daisy’s nails down his back.

Eventually they slow down, aware of where this isn’t going, but unwilling to let go yet. That’s good, too. Everything is good.

Phil moves slowly in and out of her, maybe one thrust every three breaths, gradually coming to a halt. He pulls out, and pulls her into his arms, and neither of them apologizes for it because it’s all to perfect anyway.

She feels him give up to exhaustion, feels it in his vibrations as much as she feels it in the way his chest rises and falls with each breath.

“Maybe we should redecorate your office next,” she suggests after a few minutes of silence, and is rewarded by his laughter, warming her down to her bones, making her feel alive, and wanted, and loved.

So very loved.

**Author's Note:**

> award for less inspired title for a fic goes to me, clearly.


End file.
